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Sunday, March 19, 2017

Schooled & Merkeled

The Whataboutist Society of
North America and Outlying Districts: We never let you forget about the
assholery of others, or your own.

Your pussy-grabbing days are over!

A Deliricum of Wisdom

Every passing day it seems, the U.S.
commits more and more resources to the fight against ISIS. This was all too
predictable. In fact, it was predicted by most Syrian activists way back in
2011 as they lobbied, in vain, for early U.S. intervention to stand up to the
brutalities of the Assad regime and prevent the conflict from escalating. The
U.S. is intervening now, but rather than making friends, it’s mostly making
enemies, rather than having a clear end-game, it now has to keep managing the emerging
mess almost indefinitely as it gets more complicated and more intertwined with
other conflicts out there, from Yemen to Ukraine. Yet, there’s something about
all this that is typically American. And as
the old Irish proverb goes: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Still, and as Benjamin Ward argues, “the biggest risk to Europe today
is arguably not the prospect of radical right populists in power, which has so
far been limited, but their outsize influence on mainstream policymakers.”
Indeed. The threat of populism is far from over.

Meanwhile, Going
Trump remains attached to its original meaning signifying having a
rather shitty attitude towards one’s friends and allies.

White House: No
apology to British government over spying claims. “White House press secretary Sean
Spicer flatly denied Friday that the White House apologized to the British
government after citing an uncorroborated Fox News report to allege that a UK
intelligence agency spied on President Donald Trump at the behest of former
President Barack Obama.” The allegation were ridiculed
by NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett.

Having been outfoxed
by the German Chancellor who knew how to rein him in, Mr. Trump couldn’t wait
until she left before he took to Twitter by way of compensation.

But and as a result of his tweets, which “suggest that
President [Still] doesn’t know how NATO works,” Ivo Daalder, the
former U.S. permanent representative on NATO, had to take the President to
school in a series of Tweets instructing him on hos NATO works, beginning with
the gentle reminder “Sorry
Mr President, that’s not how NATO works,” and including the harsher reminder:
“no funds will be paid to
the US … Europe must spend more on defense, but not as favor (or payment) to
the US. But because their security requires it.”

Mr. Trump had been schooled
earlier as well by the visiting Irish PM on the issue of immigrations.

But, being Trump will keep falling back on
a certain old tactic, albeit, one not usually associated with being American:

Trump Embraces
One Of Russia's Favorite Propaganda Tactics — Whataboutism… “a simple rhetorical tactic
heavily used by the Soviet Union and, later, Russia. And its use in Russia
helps illustrate how it could be such a useful tool now, in America. As Russian
political experts told NPR, it's an attractive tactic for populists in particular,
allowing them to be vague but appear straight-talking at the same time.”

This should not come as a surprise,
however, seeing how much affinity Trump and his advisers have developed to
certain emerging and all too Russian mental habits, especially that of
exhibiting being brilliant neurotic and ultimately self-destructive madness.

And while the President and his family are
entitled to our protection, at a time when the President is effectively and
actively pushing what amounts to be an austerity budget, one wonders if it’s
not time he began leading by example and adopting certain changes in his
lifestyles: Facing soaring
costs, Palm Beach officials ask Trump to pay up.

Elsewhere in this bedlam world
of ours…

The bonds of Fascist brotherhood keep
growing stronger between an actual genocidal maniac and a wannabe genocidal
maniac.

Meanwhile, the Syrian keeps posing a
challenge to more and more actors. But, for whatever reason, understanding the
desired endgame of the various actors involved and differentiating pawns from
queens remain difficult to certain “experts:”

Hizbollah’s Syria Conundrum. “Four years after
plunging into Syria’s civil war, Hizbollah has achieved its core aim of
preserving the Assad regime. Yet with no clear exit strategy, the Lebanese
“Party of God” faces ever greater costs unless it can lower the sectarian
flames, open dialogue with non-jihadist rebel groups and help pave the way for
a negotiated settlement.”

Indeed, this report misses the point
behind Hezbollah’s, rather, Iran’s intervention in Syria. Neither party is
looking for an exit here. On the contrary, what they have wanted from the very
beginning of their involvement in the conflict is to further entrench
themselves, and have been pursuing their goal by any means necessary, including
by mounting “strategic” ethnic cleansing campaigns in different parts of the
country. A spillover of the conflict into Lebanon might be welcome by them at
one point, since they are better positioned to take advantage of any unrest
there than any other groups with the goal of enacting changes to the Lebanese
demographic map as well.

Moreover, it really boggles the mind to keep
discussing Hizbollah as though it has an independent decision-making mechanism
from that of Iran’s leadership, as though it is not a proxy that it almost
wholly owned by Iran at this stage: the country that established it, keeps
funding it and supplies it with arms, training and ideology. Indeed, the
authors of the study are willing to acknowledge that “Hizbollah cannot change course in Syria without Iran’s
agreement, yet pays high and mounting costs for its intervention,” what
point is there behind treating it as though it were an independent entity. When
they say that “Hizbollah has
its own agenda, so needs its own political strategy,” that seems more
like an aspirational statement than statement of facts as they exist today. And
it’s a rather foolish aspiration at that. The idea is wish upon a star, not a
pile of shit.

These experts will have to go to bed
without having their Syrian chocolates:

In Syria, Iran
sees necessary war. “Six years into
the crisis in Syria, Iran sees the outcome of the conflict as shaping the new
Middle East. It was Iran’s first overt foreign intervention in decades, one
that some Iranian ideologues have called a war for existence. Iranian officials
say it spared the Islamic Republic from having to fight a similar warwithin its own borders… Today, just as when Iran decided to enter
Syria, the Islamic Republic continues to believe that compromising Damascus is
akin to giving up Tehran — and that whatever the price of the war, it will
never exceed the cost of losing it.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. keeps undermining its position in the Syrian Conflict, and
losing any goodwill it might still have on the ground, despite the fact that it
has invested in supporting humanitarian aid programs there more than all other
countries combined.

Indeed and while, the US military
denies the recently reported mosque hit, Bellingcat, who has done a rather excellent
job investigating similar incidents in the past, with most such incidents often
perpetrated by Russia and the Assad regime, just confirmed that the US is
indeed responsible for “Aleppo Mosque Bombing” on the basis of their thorough
investigation of all available evidence, including images and videos taken on
the scene.

True, civilian casualties are often
unavoidable when conducting airstrikes, but having done little to stop the
Assad killing machine that has been targeting civilians since 2011, the U.S.
now finds itself inadvertently joining the war against the civilian population
of Syria. This is the price for the Obama administration’s short-sightedness in
regard to the Syrian Conflict. It’s not clear that the Trump’s administration
can change course now without getting much more involved.

Trump's 'Irish
proverb' claimed by Nigerian poet. “A Nigerian man has told CNN he was surprised to learn that US
President Donald Trump had read a few lines of his poetry at an event marking
St. Patrick's Day on Thursday. "My sister just brought the news to me. I
didn't want to believe what she said initially," Albasheer Adam Alhassan,
a Nigerian banker who wrote the poem in college, said. "I posted those
things when I was back in school, over 10 years ago. I never thought it would
get to this level." "Maybe I shouldn't have been a banker, maybe I
should have been a poet all my life!" Alhassan added. The poetry
enthusiast, who lives in Katsina, is a business manager at First Bank of
Nigeria.”

For his next trick, Mr. Trump will quote
the Quran referring to it as the Kama Sutra.

The Deliricon

The Ryan Shtick: A shitty
thing that a shithead has to constantly do on behalf of so many cowardly shits
in order to garner their continued support of his position despite his deeply
shitty nature. Also known as the MitchMac Hack.

The KushBan Conspiracy: An
endeavor spearheaded by certain members of the Trump Inner Circle to install a
Deep State structure where none currently exists. To detract attention from
their efforts, and in a cynical cooptation of a classic Russian disinformation
tactic, the conspirators often speak of their continuous struggle against an
illusory Deep State that is undermining the work of the Trump Administration.

The RasDugin: A Russian fairytale
figure similar in some respects to Father Frost, except that he often appears
dressed as a clown at national rallies commemorating the dying of innocence,
reason and decency, where he gets to agitate the crowd with his popular refrain
“Kill, Kill, Kill.”

The Dutch Thing: Doing the Dutch
thing has recently become a synonym for doing the right and decent thing, like
not rewarding a racist with a high government position despite increasing populist
pressures. The saying entered popular Western discourse soon after a large
majority of Dutch electors voted in favor of castrating the folk figure known
as Orange
Pete. Observers of Dutch politics hope that people there will soon decide
to assign the other controversial Dutch folk figure known as Black Pete to the same
dustbin of history seeing that the two Petes tend to play on the same racist sentiments.

The Merkeling: An old German pickling
process involving pigs shit and stale beer. Although the end product, the Merkelkraut,
was only meant to be used as animal feed booster during food shortages, and never
for human consumption, certain restaurants catering to the rich and infamous are
known to often feature it as a special delicacy. Indeed, in the United States, the
Trump family seems to have a monopoly on Merkelkraut distribution and it is often
found on the menus of Trump-owned restaurants. In political parlance, the term
refers to letting certain decrepit political figure stew in their own fetid
juices until the moment comes and they are unceremoniously dumped into that old
dustbin of history. The invention of the Merkelkraut is attributed to a distant
ancestor of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Helmut Merkel is considered a German
folk hero and is often publicly toasted during Oktoberfest, seeing that his
invention has often helped German farmers stay afloat during economic hard times.
It’s the rise of Mrs. Merkel as a public figure that gave the term Merkeling
its modern political connotation. But, while Mrs. Merkel’s list of merkeled
political foes keeps growing the Chancellor herself seems to have long adopted
a rather “meh” attitude about the whole thing.

The Exotic Observations &
Propositions of Delirian Mundi

* You can lie and insult your way to the
bottom just as easily as you lied and insulted your way to the top.

The Cauldron

Theatrum Deliria

Faustus, Reimagined

A new post-post-post-post-modern take on
an old classic brought to you by: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, in cooperation
with a number of ghost writers.

Faustus
Reimagined: Act 1 – Scene III

Donny
Trump

So Mephastophilis, has your Boss accepted my offer? Will he help me get
an 8-year lease on the White House?

Mephastophilis

My Boss instructs me to tell you that he can get your foot in the door.
Once there, you will have to start negotiating the specific lease terms.

Donny
Trump

And for this he’d want my soul in return? Sounds unfair.

Mephastophilis

Oh no, Donny, come on. We all know you have no soul to barter with. What
my boss wants is really much simpler than that. He just wants you to praise
him, as often as you can, and, then, just be yourself. Your arrogant, narcissistic
and cretinous self.

Donny
Trump

That’s all

Mephastophilis

That’s all.

Donny
Trump

Well, then, done. Tell your boss we have a deal. My dear
Mephastophilis I feel this is going to be the beginning of a long and beautiful
friendship.

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